Tag Archives: life

At the end of the summer, Marinka aimed to take entrance exams to the two top medical institutes in the city. Mother offered to pull some strings: The woman was never at a lack of connects. But I’ve gotta give it to sis! She was determined to get in on the basis of her merit alone. (In those days, the idealism of the Russian youth tended to have a longer expiration date. Skepticism stepped in much later, flooding anywhere where the Soviet control of information gave room.)

So, after half of June spent on cramming for her high school finals, Marinka hibernated for about week; then, immediately resumed her studies. Mother wasn’t thrilled about it:

“Now, instead just one bookworm, I have two Oblomovas in the house!”

Those days, I began to wonder about what constituted a woman’s happiness. Mother, whose only expression of joy was overly stretched, forced — a sort of a strained delirium — didn’t strike me as genuine, but something quite the opposite, nearing insanity. She wasn’t happy in the way that Olya Morozova seemed, in her mother’s altered dress, on her own wedding day. And any time I’d seen her since, blissfully pregnant or contemplatively picking tomatoes at a market on weekends, she looked like someone composing a complicated orchestral movement: Lost in thoughts that she desired, never seeking approval (and why would she need it, with her moderate beauty, always basking in adoration?); content but not out of love or out of curiosity; fluid, available; kind.

For the first few weeks, mother struggled with the no longer vague signs of her oldest daughter’s ambition. She sized up our bunk beds, branding us with the name of the biggest lazy ass in the whole of Russian literature: Oblomov. Other times, she tempted us with distractions: a rerun of Santa Barbara or the news of other women’s misfortunes. It would happen mostly in that late afternoon hour, when mother, having returned yet again from a day of hunting for discounts and gossip, was expected to be in the kitchen. And we were expected to assist, simply because we were daughters. And therefore born female. And therefore, we had no choice. (But one always had a choice, even in the country that didn’t advertise freedom. We could choose the other way: the way outside of the expected, of the presumed.)

In response to the call for confrontation, I listened to my sis remain motionless above my head. It gave me the courage to stay sprawled out on my stomach as well, despite the signs of mother’s fuming in the doorway. The smell of her perfume lurked more oppressively than her silence. The anxiety of always, somehow, being perpetually wrong — inappropriate, incorrect — stirred in my chest. What was to happen?

Mother exhaled audibly, turned on her heels and stormed out of our room, making a ruckus with the bamboo curtains in the doorway. I held my breath, just in case of her abrupt return; until a few moments later, the kitchen appliances began tuning into an orchestra of percussions. I suppose a light touch does not belong to every woman; and our mother exorcised her frustrations via the objects that reminded her of domesticity.

I slathered up the ladder to Marinka’s bed and rested my chin on the last plank:

Sis looked up: “Hey, monkey.” She stopped chewing on her pencil for long enough to smile faintly, as if to herself. There was that mystery, again; the place of thoughts where women departed — to create, to process, to understand; or maybe rather to mourn, or to escape.

“Oooh,” I bulged out my eyes in the best dramatic delivery I’d inherited from mom, hissing: “Mom’s pee-ssed!”

Marinka smirked — inhaled — and resumed making a meal out of her pencil again. The two females had been in a bickering war this entire summer. Still, sis would not speak unkindly of our mother, at least not to me. To be the last to abandon her graces was my sister’s route to growing up. Descending into silence, she never gossiped in return these days, only listened whenever mother couldn’t hold it in.

Sis was curled up in the corner or plastered against the wall. She looked dewy and flushed. Her eyes shined with the symptoms of the cooped-up syndrome. She appeared sleepy and slightly dazed. Colorful drawings of human insides, notebooks, flashcards, a pile of reference encyclopedias borrowed from the library, a tipi of stacked colored pencils were spread on top of the purple blanket we’d inherited from our grandmother in Siberia. The old woman had died having accumulated nothing.

I watched Marinka’s plump lips mouth off unpronounceable terms. Mean smart! Ignoring my adoration (which was always too nosy or too hyper anyway), she leaned forward to flip a page; and, as she sometimes did in obedience to the flood of her kindness, grazed the top of my head with her sharp nails.

In those moments, oh, how I missed her already!

Some afternoons, when the heat became so unbearable not even the open windows offered much relief, we agreed to leave the house for the river bank. Half the town would have had the same idea by then. Mother grumbled about how we had wasted half a day on our shenanigans; yet, from the way she readied herself — nosily, running in her bra between the closets and the bathroom I wondered if she relished arriving to a packed beach. Giant straw hats with floppy edges were matched to colorful cotton sarafans with wide skirts that blew up at all the wrong times. There was a weightiness to most of mother’s possessions.

I was ordered to carry our picnic basket. Marinka was loaded up with blankets, towels and old linen sheets. We treaded ahead, while mother joined and laughed with various families, also en route to the river.

As predicted, everyone and their mother was out catching a break from the afternoon sun. The tilted bank was dressed with a smog of accumulated heat. For days, it hadn’t let up. Sheets and towels were splattered on top of yellowing grass, and families in various states of undress moved around sluggishly. Seemingly every kid in town, with the exception of the Slow Vanya who was home-schooled all of his life, was now squealing and splashing in the water.

As soon as we reached the top of the hill, an abrasive smell of fresh cow dung greeted us when the barely palpable breeze blew in our direction:

“Oh. We’ve missed the collective bath!” Marinka said under her breath. She was becoming funnier, too.

En route to and from their feeding ground, the farm cows were led into the river daily, to cool down and to get a break from the murders of flies. They must’ve just left.

Without getting up, the mothers were already hollering their instructions to the frenetic children again:

“Be careful, Irotchka!”

“Sasha! Don’t manhandle your sister!”

“What did I tell you about swimming that far?! MASHA!”

There were some fathers who got into the water on occasion, but they immediately got flocked by their own and other people’s children with runny noses and, for whatever reason, fatherless, for that day.

Our stuff hadn’t hit the ground, yet I was already squirming out of my clothes and hauling ass toward the water. Marinka dropped her load and scurried off after me, still in her jeans skirt with rhinestones on her pockets.

“Marina! Please watch where she goes!” mother, already slathering herself with sunflower oil in a company of her girlfriends, barely took notice of the fact that my beautiful, olive-skinned sister shed a few shades and turned nearly pale with terror.

She stopped. “Mama? She’s fine!”

I too looked back. Seemingly every hairy male appeared to have propped himself up on his elbows to get a better look at my sister’s behind. Mother was already gone, having departed quickly from any parental awareness. Marinka was expected to step in.

I slowed down and waited for my sister to catch up.

“If you’re lonely, I don’t have to go in.” Devotedly, I looked up at my sis. She seemed so out of place here, somehow kinder than the rest!

“It’s fine, my monkey,” she reached for my hand and looked ahead, at the glistening water at the other edge of the river, and the field of sunflowers there; or possibly further beyond all that, maybe somewhere where her life was going to begin.

“I’ve decided__to let Doug__go,” Sarah told her Sid, on a typical Tuesday morning. Her mother would have scoffed at the idea of anything typical, let alone the chronic event of Sarah’s whining on the hard couch, never to be found in her own hysterical universe. Nonetheless, Sarah had said it; and surprised herself when, out loud, she had to insert a glottal stop between “Doug” and “go”. She had thought it before, those two specific words in a row; but never let her mouth take them over. Because when she practiced speaking to Doug (while in reality speaking to herself, alone in her narrow kitchen), she had never let “go” — go after “Doug”. She didn’t know how to let “Doug go”. So, she would continue to come back.

Did the Sid notice it: Sarah’s surprise at the way phonemes worked, once her mouth took them over? For a second, she imagined her face on an infant, cooing and choking on her first words. What wonderment! It wasn’t necessarily Sarah herself — as an infant — but perhaps her firstborn. That was the exact problem with these only children, in the world, like Sarah: They made for more desperate mothers, for they hadn’t yet seen themselves reflected in another human being. But back in the day, when she had asked her mother for a sibling, “I have not time — for such a sing!” — her mother answered, every bit the tired woman this new chosen world had begun to make of her. Eventually, Sarah would give up asking; and by the time, she herself could biologically mother a child, she had forgotten all desire to mother a child — spiritually.

Miranda, the Sid, was studying her with glossy eyes. She must’ve just stifled a yawn, Sarah thought. Then, she reiterated her decision, whose courage appeared to have expired back in her kitchen. She was looking for the long overdue alliance:

“Yes.__I’m going to let Doug (stop) go.”

“Going to”. Not “gonna”. Sarah judged all American contractions quite bluntly, holding them away from her face with the two fingers of her dominant hand: Violations to the language! decapitation of words, ew! Her own native tongue sounded too proper in her mouth, for she hadn’t practiced it much, since leaving the old world. Her mother’s Ukrainian was always humorous, bawdy and full of life. Sarah, on the other hand, sounded like an academic; or like the librarian that she had become, her intention to leave, eventually — forgotten. She had stayed too long and froze.

“You’re such a snob, man,” J.C. said to her on the phone. He had a “gonna” on his voicemail greeting: “I’m gonna call you back.” It had been bugging Sarah for all the years that she had loved him, learning for the first time that some men do stay long enough to reveal their faults — and to teach you to adore them, still.

Still, the “gonna” would bug her until she stopped listening far enough into the outgoing message. (And if anyone had an “outgoing” message — it would have to be J.C.! “Peace!” his voice always announced at the end of it — a naive ultimatum to the world by someone who hadn’t experienced much unkindness. But before Sarah could get to the “peace”, she would’ve already hung up before the “gonna”. NOT “going to”.)

Eventually, she mentioned it.

“You’re such a snob, man,” J.C. responded, from the back of his throat — the same geography from which her mother spoke, as well, in both of her tongues. Her mother’s words had a chronic tendency to fall back, making her register chesty. Or, hearty. Everything about her mother — was hearty.

Sarah propelled her words forward, as her American contemporaries did:

“I’m not! I have a Liberal Arts education and I work at the New York Public Library.” Her self-patronizing didn’t work. So, she thought about it, sweating the phone against her ear. “Okay. I’m going to try to be better about it, you’re right.” Still: “Going to” — not “gonna”.

But when she told the news to her Sid, while pacing her words, “What made you decide__to do that?” — the Sid responded.

Like attracts like, Sarah let the flash of a thought slip by. Like attracts like, and she had been spending every Tuesday morning observing — and sometimes admiring — this nifty woman who hung up her words, niftily. Sarah could never be nifty. She was frozen, in between the two worlds of her mother’s; sorting something out because something was always off. She was constantly relaying between wanting to belong and not knowing why the fuck should she?! And she would narrow it down to the pace: Things moved differently here; differently from what little she could remember of the old world. It wasn’t so much the speed of things, but the direction — a lack of it — making each life’s trajectory chaotic. It took longer to sort out a life; and even when one finally did, the life could easily shake off one’s grasp of its saddle, run off its course and resume flailing between others’ ambitions and desires for you, then your own delusions and ways of coping with losses and defeats.

To the Sid’s question, Sarah finally responded: “I feel badly__for doing that__for all these years__to Doug’s wife.” Except that, by then, she would be in her narrow kitchen, alone again, talking to herself. She was never quick enough for an eloquent comeback, face to face with another human being.

(Her mother never seemed to have that problem. Mother would always speak her mind, causing a brief gestation of shock in her conversations. But then, the American participants would laugh off their discomfort, patching their sore egos with “You’re so cute!”, at her mother’s expense.

“God bless you!” Sarah’s mother would respond then, mocking the American habit for only jolly endings.)

Once, Sarah had tried imagining this woman — this other woman — in Doug’s life, who had been so epically hard for him to leave. Except that Sarah had gotten it all confused, again: She — was the other woman. The third wheel. She had read theories about women with low self-esteem before — women like her; women who prayed on other women’s husbands and who envied the wives of those sad men, with the eyes of a spaniel. (What was the difference between jealousy and envy, again: The doer of one — but the assumer of another?) So, Sarah had tried imagining the woman she should envy: The one who got Doug full-time — something that she should be pitied for, actually.

That night, Doug had taken her out to a pan-Asian restaurant on the Upper West Side. Or, actually, they had just walked-in — into the house of dim lanterns and dim sum; because otherwise Doug, according to his disgruntled self-prognosis, was “gonna crash”. (“Gonna”, not “going to”. So much for poetry, professor!)

The shrimp stew he had ordered for Sarah arrived to her golden-and-red placemat. The shiny shrimp tails, as pink as newborn hamsters, stuck out of the white rice, covered with milky-white slime. She didn’t even like rice. Her people came from the land of potatoes. Potatoes and sorrow. He wanted none of it.

“I can’t sleep over tonight,” Doug broke the news into his bowl of steaming miso soup. His hunger has been staved off with cubes of tofu. “It’s Beth’s birthday.”

Beth. She bet Beth (insert a glottal stop in between) was patient and calm; living steadily ever after, while quietly meeting the expectations that her parents naturally harbored for their next generation. She must’ve colored her hair every two weeks, in settle shades of red; wore flat shoes, hummed while folding Doug’s clean laundry; and she cut her nails short, as to not cause any breakage on surrounding surfaces. And she bet (stop) Beth had a sibling. Nifty.

“Nifty,” Sarah echoed. Neither the slimy shrimp nor the sticky rice could balance on her wooden chopsticks. So, she grabbed it by the tail: “Shouldn’t you be__taking her out__then?” She was beginning to pace her words again. It started to feel like rage.

Doug squinted his eyes. It wasn’t his first time, but not something that she had gotten used to yet, in their affair: The beginnings of their mutual resentment.

“No need to get snappy,” he said, suddenly looking like he was about to cry. It was an expected trajectory, for him: going from a man-child who felt uncared for (what, fending for his own food, or he was “gonna crash”, while under her care?!) — to the scorned lover, exhausted by his failed expectations. Then, why wouldn’t he just stay with Beth, who sounded smart enough and mellow; at peace and never shocked at this world’s disorder; unfazed by chaos, as children of full, healthy families tended to be? (Nifty.)

And how ever did she, herself, end up here, wanting to take the place of the woman who deserved her pity, actually — a woman Sarah would much rather like, were she to meet her, on her own? On their own, could they fall into a gentle admiration — love? — of each other?

“So, how old is good ole Beth__going__to be?” Sarah asked. But her words came out shrill, and the sloppy face of the washed-up actress began inching its way down her forehead.

There had been other break-ups, in their history. Most of them, she had instigated herself, practicing them ahead of time, alone in her kitchen. But in reality, the break-ups came out clumsily, and not at all ironic.

In her heart — or rather somewhere around her diaphragm, underneath her lungs, perpetually under her breath — Sarah felt she would be punished for this. She was already getting judged by her Sid — the woman she was paying to side with her, and then to guide her from that place of purchased empathy.

This time — it would be different.

It would be Sarah asking Doug out. She had told him to meet her at a Starbucks, located at least two zip codes away from his and Beth’s neighborhood. Doug would arrive first, with some latest book of poetry moderately well reviewed by critics under his armpit; and she would find him — drowning into the soft leather chair in the corner and muttering — while making ferocious notes on its pages and sipping from a Venti. Except that this time, she wouldn’t listen to his embittered theories, always delivered in a slightly exhibitionist manner, as if pleading to be overheard: on this poet being undeserving, or on that one — being, god forbid, better connected. (“When is it gonna be about talent, in this industry?!” “Going to” — NOT “gonna” — professor!)

This time, she would pass up her dose of caffeine, walk out into the wind and pace ahead, while the fat snowflakes sloppily kissed her forehead. The five o’clock sun overlooked the island with its rouge glares. This place had a flair for nonchalant beauty. It never posed, but grew and changed — a once magnificent idea merely running out its course: New York City. This City left all acts of sad foolishness and silly coverups of aching egos to the ones that could not keep up. (“You’re so cute!” — “God bless you!”)

And she would try to keep the break-up neat; because catching the A-train after ten at night meant freezing on the platform while watching giant rats have their supper in the oil spills of the rails. Later on, on the phone, that would be her mother’s favorite part; and she would ask Sarah for more details: the color of the rats’ fur in Ukrainian and the reek of the tunnel, made dormant by the cold temperatures, which she demanded for Sarah to translate into Celsius, in order for her to understand — to get the very gist of it, the very heart. Everything about her mother — had a heart. Perhaps, that was the secret to her overcoming chaos.

But when it came down to the heart of the matter — Sarah’s dull ache of disappointment, the failure of words, and the resigned mindset of someone frozen in loss — her mother became quiet. And the phone continued sweating against Sarah’s tired ear, surely causing her something, later on, in life.

Moreover: If you want to know the very gist of me, the ethics upon which I stand and the beliefs with which I measure the world; if you want to predict the disappointments of my spirit when others don’t live up to the their goodness (and if you wish to summon my own aspirations to be only good); if you desire to see the shadows of my mistakes and flaws that cost me so much time and heartbreak — the stories in my father’s eyes will tell all.

(His eyes are blue and honest. The man lacks all capacity to tell a lie. And if ever he discovers himself in the unsettling situation of having let somebody down — never due to his shortcomings but only circumstances — his hand comes up to rub the ridge above his eyebrows; sometimes, his chin. He hates to be the cause of pain.)

All other loves of mine — are replicas, and I have spent half of my lifetime searching for the exceptional kindness with which my father treats the world. In the beginning, I was meant to fail: It takes a while to not take for granted the components of our parents’ characters which, with our own older years, begin to make us proud. Identity compiles its layers with our exposure to the world; but the very roots of our goodness can only lead to those who gave us life and hopefully our first opinions of it. Their goodness — is our very, and most important, homecoming. And if I had to choose my only prayer for this world, I’d ask for every prodigal child to find their way back home, through forgiveness, wherein lies the discovery of what was missing all along. It always lies in our parents’ souls.

(There are two folds, now permanent, at the medial edge of father’s eyebrows. In those, he carries his concerns for those lives that he has vowed to protect. In them, I see the weight of manhood, his duty and his sacrifice. The endless rays of lines at the outer edges of my father’s eyes. How easily they bring him back to lightness! My father lives in constant readiness to bond over the common human goodness and delight. He’d rather smile, for life, and not brace himself to witness his child’s or the children of others’ pain. He’d rather give and then dwell in that specific peacefulness that happens after generosity — and not be helpless at relieving someone of their deprivation.)

The whole of lifetime, I can recall the never failing access to my gratitude. In childhood, I couldn’t name it yet: I never needed any reasons or explanations for the lightness of those days. My adolescent years posed a question about the qualities that made me differ from my contemporaries; and when I watched my friends make their choices, while inheriting the patterns of their parents, I started wondering about the source of what made me lighter on my feet and ready for adventure. I was different, but what was really the cause of it?

(My father lives in readiness to be childlike. When new things capture his imagination, I can foresee the eyes of my son, when he would be continuously thrilled by the world. Dad frowns a bit when he attempts to comprehend new things, but never in a burdened way: So intently he tries to comprehend the world, he thinks hard and quickly to get to the very main point of every new event and person, the central apparatus of every previously unknown bit of technology and invention. And then, he speaks, while studying your face for signs of recognition. To honor others with his complete understanding — is crucially important to that man!)

It would be gratitude, as I would name it later: The main quality of my father’s character that made me — that made us — different from others. The privilege of life never escaped my self-awareness. Just breathing seemed to be enough.

In the beginning years of my adulthood, which had to strike our family quite prematurely, I started aching on behalf of seemingly the whole world: I wished for human dignity. We needn’t much in order to survive, but to survive with dignity — was what I wished upon myself and everyone I loved (and by my father’s fashion — I LOVED the world and wished it well!). And then, when life would grant me its adventures, however tiny or grandiose, the force of gratitude would make me weep. Then, I would rest in my humility and try to pay it forward, to others.

(No bigger thrill my father knows in life than to give gifts. They aren’t always luxurious, but specific. They come from the erudite knowledge of his every beloved that my father gains through life. Sometimes, all it takes is someone’s equal curiosity toward a piece of beauty — and this magnificent man (my father!) would do anything to capture just a token of it and give it as a gift. He looks at someone’s eyes when they are moved by beauty, and in his own, I see approval and the highest degree of pleasure.

And I have yet to know another person who accepts his gifts more humbly than my father; because in life, IT ALL MATTERS. No detail must be taken for granted and no reward can be expected. So, when kindness is returned to my father by others, he is seemingly surprised. But then, he glows at the fact that all along, he had been right, about the world: That everyone is good!)

And that’s the mark that father leaves upon the world. He never chose a life with an ambition to matter, but to commit specific acts of goodness — is his only objective. With time that has been captured in my father’s photographs, I see his own surrender to the chaos and sometimes tragic randomness of life. And so, to counteract it, he long ago chose to be good.

The shades were closed. The house was dark. It had always struck me strange the way she’d keep all windows locked down, in order to keep the cold air inside. The manufactured cool would dry out her skin and the house would smell mechanical. She’d complain, blow the arid air through her deviated septum; then slather her age spots with some sort of bleaching cream.

She lived too close to the dessert; and only late at night, she’d give the house fans a rest. Their constant humming would finally die down, and suddenly the sounds of gentle quietness in nature would be overheard through an occasionally open window. The skin of my scalp would relax at the temples: I would forget to notice my constant frown during the 20-hour long humming. My face acquired new habits since living in this house, and I was beginning to forget the girl who had been asked to pay the price of her childhood — in an exchange for the better future.

But on that day, it was too early to allow the nature to come in, yet. And as I entered the empty house, I immediately noticed the hum. I had been gone for half a week: too short of a time to forget the climate of this house entirely — and most definitely not enough to forgive it! I took off my shoes, remembering the stare she’d give her visitors whenever they were too oblivious to obey. Slowly, I began to pass from room to room.

The light gray carpet that covered most of the house’s footage was immaculately clean. And if there was an occasional rug — under a chair or a coffee table — it usually marked an accidental spill of food or drink by a very rare house guest. I’d be the only one who knew that though: I’d witness all their hidden faults. And she would run the vacuum every night, pulling and yanking it in very specific directions. Those vacuum markings had to remain there undisturbed; and only those who didn’t know better were kindly permitted to destroy them with their footsteps.

I opened the bedroom’s double doors first but found no courage to come in. Instead, I stood on the cold titles, on the other side, and studied the footsteps by her bed. There was a cluster of them, right by the nightstand. Is that where she had been picked up by the paramedics? I looked for outlines of boots imprinted into the fur of the carpet. I thought I saw none.

The living room carpet seemed undisturbed. The markings of the vacuum, which she must’ve done the night before, were still perfectly parallel. The cold tiles of the kitchen floor had no residue of food. She’d wash those on her hands and knees with paper towels. And she would go over it until the wet towel would stop turning gray. No dishes in the sink. No evidence of an unfinished meal. No evidence of life at all. I began to wonder where she’d collapsed.

The door to my former bedroom was shut. Most likely, it had remained so since I’d departed. I made it to the office — the only space where some disarray was less prohibited. The bills where broken down by due dates and neatly piled perpendicularly, on top of one another. Her husband had a habit of resting his feet on the edge of the corner desk, as he played on the computer for hours, until she’d fall asleep. Then, he’d come into my bedroom.

My bedroom. Its door was closed. I turned the handle and expected for the usual catch of its bottom against the rug that she insisted on keeping on the other side. Strangely, it covered up no visible spots. I pushed it open.

It was a sight of madness. One woman’s rage had turned the place into a pile of shredded mementos, torn photos and broken tokens of forsaken love. The bedcovers were turned over. The sheets had been peeled off the mattress two-thirds down, as if by someone looking for the evidence of liquids near my sex. The stuffed toys which normally complete my line-up of pillows were now strewn all over the floor, by the wall opposite of my headrest.

On top of an overturned coffee table I saw my letters: My cards to her and hers — to me. She’d even found the letters in my parents’ hand, and she shredded them to piece. Nothing was off limits. No love was sacred after hers had been betrayed.

I stepped inside to see the other side of one torn photograph that flew the closest to the door. At first, I tried to catch my breath. A feeling on sickly heaviness got activated in the intestines. In murder mysteries that she adored to watch with me, I’d seen detectives scurry off into the corner furthest from the evidence, and they would throw up — or choke at least — at the atrocity of crimes against humanity. Apparently, my insides wanted to explode from the other end.

I paced myself. Carefully, that I, too, would not collapse, I bent down and picked up the shredded photo. It was my face, torn up diagonally across the forehead. On the day of my high school graduation, her husband had come over to the side of the fence where we were beginning to line up. I can see the faces of my classmates in the background. They smiling at his lens. They are supposed to, as he — was “supposed” to be my father.

He was not. And I’m not smiling. I’ve raised one eyebrow, and my lips are parted as if I’d just told him to fuck off. Not even there, he would allow for me to be without him. Not even there, I could be alone for long enough to remember the girl who’d been asked for her childhood in an exchange… for what?

She stands at about my height. I rarely see much difference between me and other women, though: And unless they’re tall enough to grace the covers of beauty magazines — or the streets of Manhattan — I consider them pretty much my height.

Although born on the coast of Mexico, her skin bears the same caramel color as mine. Her face, I can tell, used to be very pretty, even doll-like. Her formerly black hair is snow streaked with gray highlights; and it is gathered in the back of her head into a thick ponytail of luscious curls. Rich women would kill for thick hair like that!

I catch myself wondering how much she would have aged — had her life not been so hard.

I bet there is an encyclopedia of domestic tricks up this woman’s sleeve: Washing her hair with egg yolks, making masks out of avocado and honey, moisturizing her heels with Bengay. I’ve seen my own motha invent a few of those. We are immigrants: We get crafty, in survival. For life is relentless: It takes a toll on all of us all, but it’s most unforgiving — to us, women.

“Me too!” I say, and I begin nodding and smiling aggressively: Just anything to make her feel understood. “I was sixteen too!”

I want to tell her to switch to her native language, because I am pretty sure I get the gist of her already. Despite the difference between our birth coasts, we seem to speak of the same tales.

But then again, maybe not:

I keep flaunting my American education in order to impress employers with gigs at a higher rate. She — cleans houses for a living. I tend to get hired to work the phones and to organize the lives of others that have gotten cluttered with too many demands. She — creates order in other people’s homes, with her no longer soft, but womanly hands. Besides the existences of my bosses, I am responsible primarily for myself. She — has three kids to take care of, and a boyish husband.

“You? No marr-rried?” she asks me.

The importance of family defines happiness in her culture; so, I get slightly embarrassed for a moment. Despite the difference between our birth coasts, I so very much want us to be alike. Is it this woman’s approval that I’m striving for; or just her empathy?

In one breath, I deliver: “NoIamnotmarried.”

“In a couple more years, you’ll be middle-aged,” a man has declared the other day.

This woman’s arms are cradling a tiny dog; and in the folds of her stomach, he easily goes to sleep. Her figure belongs to a mother: She is fuller, curvier than my boyish frame. Her hands are more sure and seemingly more knowing than mine.

“Is good you no married so soon,” she says. She must’ve picked up on my embarrassment. “Life more hard. I am… um… parent. Every-thing more hard.”

I ask her about her kids: She nods and smiles when describing each of the three: a two-year old baby-girl and a little boy. Her oldest daughter wants to be a nurse. When she speaks of her husband, she averts her eyes; and despite the slow manner of her chosen worlds, she quickly switches the topic to his job.

“Is good…” she concludes. “Warehouse. Down. Town. Is good!”

The little dog shifts on her stomach and extends his fluffy paws toward me. I take them and rub the un-callused pillows on the bottom. She laughs and teases the bangs above his eyes; and when her hand brushes against mine, I notice that her skin is tougher than the one I’m rubbing in between my fingers.

“You… work?” she asks me.

“Of course,” I say and begin listing my gigs. This is the first time I doubt she understands me. To my own ears, I begin sounding busy, and slightly fussy. So, I stop.

I interrupt my list. “Everybody works here,” I conclude; and the woman begins nodding and smiling aggressively. She is getting the gist of me.

I study her eyes: She stands at my level, and most definitely — at my height! But then she leaves for work; and I reluctantly begin mine. It’s life — at work; and in its working, it is especially unforgiving to us, women.

I don’t know. How does anybody ever manage to remember the color of these walls?

One of the walls appears missing entirely: Instead it is taken up by a giant window, with a hideous air-conditioning unit directly underneath it. They don’t build windows like that on the East Coast. Everything must be larger in the West: More land, wider roads; bigger closets and endless windows — windows from which we gaze upon the same vast land and highways that carry us along the coast, to and away from love, in a never-ending act of our indecisiveness about solitude.

In Vermont, there are houses with porches and hammocks; and in those houses, the window are unhinged, then flung open, into the idillic streets, best colored during Indian Summer. In Maine, the window panes collect moisture, balancing out the difference between the temperatures with precipitation and moss. In New York, one can always find a jammed window, or a broken one; and often, there is some lever one must work, in order to let in some fresh air.

I’m staring out of the giant hole in the wall, with sliding glass, into the desolate desert landscape with gray domes of industrial buildings and rare traffic. I can see the packed parking lot of the hospital on the ground floor, and judging by the way people leap out of their cars, once they find a spot, I can tell the status of their beloved’s health. The worst cases pull up directly to the curb. Others choose to ride in an ambulance.

I see the disheveled head of a woman clutching a baby blanket being helped out of the red swinging doors. She is being lifted by two men in uniforms; and once on the ground, one of them must remind her how to walk.

I look away: Dear God! I think I’m starting to run out of prayers.

On the horizon — gray mountains. They are always gray, on this side, and only in the deepest winter do their peaks adopt a different shade: of stark-white snow. I think of the East, again. The mountains aren’t mountains out there: They’re hills.

Everything must be larger, in the West. And I’m one of those travelers, speeding along its wider roads, in a never-ending act of my indecisiveness about solitude: chasing, then running away from love — then, coming back for more.

The beep-beep-beep of the life-support machine brings me back into the room. I am alone here. Well, no: She is here too. But I’m not sure if her Here is in the same vicinity as mine. The doctors have managed to bring her back from wherever that is a broken heart takes its victims: They have struggled to bring her back Here, through a series of shots and shocks and tricks of the trade.

So, now she is back Here; but I know her Here — is nowhere near. It’s a different space entirely — a different Here where I, despite my conflicts with love, do not yet wish to be.

The doctors have spoken of Hope.

“Here is still some,” they say; and because they don’t avert their eyes, I wonder how many times they’ve had to say this — just today.

And how are they going to say it again to the disheveled mother who’s forgotten how to walk?

I come up to her bed. Her skin is ashen. I’ve never seen this color on the living before: It’s yellowish-blue, sickly and wax-like. It juxtaposes against all other shades with defeated sadness. So, the fuchsia pink of her pedicured toenails peaking out from under the sheet loses all vividness. The acrylic nails on her fingers, of the same shade, now have an appearance of props.

I remember she used to snap them against each other, when laughing herself to tears while telling a joke. She was good at jokes. And in my memory, that hollow sound of snapping nails has come to mean her good moods.

The beep-beep-beep of the life-support machine brings me back into the room: Again! It reminds me of the rhythm her broken heart is forced to take on, in order to stay Here. Is this — the sound of Hope? This slow, mathematically precise beat of an intelligent machine that, despite its act of mercy, does not possess the sensitivity to understand?

Her body has left this Here: The Here of the Living! She doesn’t want to be Here, anymore! And it is a terrible thought; and I cannot bring myself to say it out loud, in front the drooping face of her mourning husband.

I stand by her bed and study her face. It’s not peaceful, as my useless novels have promised. She looks perplexed, and I find myself fixated on the faded outline of her lipstick. I want to wipe it off for her: She would have wanted dignity, while — and if — she is still Here. She is a woman with no heartbeat but perfectly manicured nails. I think of paging the nurse.

The tubes, running to and from her wrists, fascinate me with their width. I follow them with their eyes, up to the beep-beep-beep of the life-support machine. I study the monitor.

What was I looking for?

I return to her face, looking for answers. A tiny tear, that has formed at an outer corner of her right eye, begins crawling across her temple.

What else is there to do, my darling, but to keep on going: to keep on living?

You won’t even preoccupy yourself with the choice to stop until you’ve known some despair. And there will be despair, in life, no matter how well I try to divert it, my darling.

It will strike you in the midst of a loss and eat up all the light illuminating the rest of your way. It will challenge the clarity of your dreams. Sometimes, you’ll feel like you’ve lost it: this fleeting certainty about having a meaning, a purpose, in life.

“What is all this for, anyway?” you’ll ask yourself (although I do so very much hope that you will ask me first).

Despair is terrifying like that: It aims at hope. It’s quiet and dark. It’s not like rage that clouds your vision with a rebellion against a collective sense of injustice. Instead, it grovels. It hungers. It reaches for things in mere hope of someone’s last minute mercy. And it dwells in sad corners of rented apartments where the faint smell of previous residents can’t help but remind you of irrelevance; of passing.

Because everything passes, my darling, and every-one.

Everything passes — and this, too, shall pass.

Oh, how often I’ve wondered about what you will be like! I try not to commit too much hubris at fantasizing about the color of your eyes, or the structure of your hair, or the shade of your skin. But I have an idea, I think; and I hunt for it in the faces of other people’s children.

I try to restrain myself from predicting your gender. In my younger day, I thought that most certainly you would be born a girl. It was my duty, I thought, as a woman, to give way — to another woman. I had already done it enough for plenty of others: for the women I love or barely even know. I never competed with my gender. Instead, I devoted my life to making up for their difficulty of being born female.

It’s idealistic, I know, and a bit of a cliche. It makes me into an easy target for those who could not find other ways of expressing their fears — but to tear down a woman’s self-esteem. And so they did. Some had succeeded, my darling, but not all; and not for long. For I had shaken most of them off, by now; then spent the rest of my years repairing myself — with goodness.

Because what else is there to do, my darling, but to keep on going?

As a young woman, I was sure that I would make a better mother to one of my own kind. I would devote the rest of my life to making up for the difficulty of your having been born a girl: making it up to you, for life. For your life, my darling.

But then, I had to love enough — and to lose enough loves — to open my mind to letting you be. You may be a son, after all: a boy whom I would teach to never be afraid.

May you never-ever be afraid, my darling!

But if you ever were, I would teach you to keep on going — with goodness.

Because sometimes, life is summarized in our perseverance: not just past the dramatic and the painful; but past the mundane, as well. (I, despite my three decades among the living, still haven’t figured out which I find most grueling. But I have known both, my darling — tragedy and survival alike — and I have persevered.)

And what else is there to do, my darling, but to keep on going? to keep on persevering?

Everything passes: Despair, joy, loss and thrill.

But goodness: Goodness must keep on going. It must keep on happening.

So, these days, I no longer imagine your face or your gender; your stride, style, or habits. I don’t fantasize about the way you’ll flip your hair or tilt your chin; then, yank on the threads of my familial lineage. No, no: I don’t daydream about hearing the echos of my mother’s laughter in yours. I don’t pray for accidental manners that will bring back the long forgotten memories of my self.

No, my darling: I’ll just let you determine all of that on your own.

Instead, now, I spend my days thinking of your character: The temperament you’ll inherit and the choices you’ll learn to make. For that is exactly what I owe you, the most: To teach you goodness, my darling.

It shouldn’t be too hard, from the start; because everyone is born good. But it is my responsibility to teach you goodness in the face of adversity; in the face of despair, despite the collective sense of injustice from other people.

So, I shall teach you goodness as a way of persevering.

Because you must, my darling: You must persevere. And you must never-ever be afraid!

Yes, it’s a hard way of being: Living as an artist. But then, again, I wouldn’t want to be living — in any other way.

And I’ve tried. In all honesty, I’ve tried to be many things: Anything else but an artist. An administrator, a teaching assistant, and a secretary. A proofreader, an academic, a critic. A manager. An accountant. A librarian.

They had known me for years, and for years — they had seen me working. They had watched me giving a very fair try to living for the sake of a different profession. A “normal” profession. A job. And they had witnessed me change my mind.

Back then, I wasn’t really sure which profession it would turn out to be, so I would try everything. And instead of entertaining things, I would satisfy my curiosity by leaping into every opportunity. Because I always felt I could be so many things; but I wanted to make sure that I couldn’t be anything else — but an artist.

Being an artist resembled an exotic disease — a dis-ease of the soul — and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t one of its victim.

“So, what’s your major this morning?” my folks teased me during our phone calls. I was prone to changing my mind, and the flexibility of my American education confused the hell out of them.

“Well, at least, you’re getting an education,” my best friend comforted me. She always comforted me. And it seemed to bother her the least — my proneness to change my mind, because I felt I could be so many things.

Come to think of it: It should have been easier, in my youth. During our college years, that’s exactly what we were meant to do: To seek. To learn. To experiment. To be — so many things!

But somehow, my contemporaries seemed to be more certain about their paths. They would be teachers or administrators. The more city-savvy types were going into investment banking in New York. And I’ve even known one biologist and a chick who went to work for Fox News. But mostly, they would be teachers.

“How can they be so sure?” I wondered.

Because I wasn’t sure. I could foresee the pleasure in having a day job with which I could identify myself for a couple of years; but the romance of its routine would expire as soon as some bureaucrat’s ego would begin dictating procedures to me, on a daily basis. Some of them didn’t like my language, or my dress code. They handed me time sheets and forms, along with the lists of appropriate jewelry. Some wanted me to tame my hair. Others preferred I didn’t call my colleagues “Loves”.

So, I would leave. I would always leave, but with enough notice and plenty of disappointment noticeable on my employers’ faces:

“It’s just that you had so much potential!” they would say.

“Then, why did you break my balls about my headscarves?” I would think in response. Still, I would leave with grace (even if I was leaving over burning bridges).

After college, I would be the only one in my class to leave for an art school.

Everyone had an opinion. Everyone but me. I still felt I could be so many things, but I really wanted to be — just one!

Some seemed to be quite disappointed in my decision to stick to the arts.

“What are you gonna do — with an art degree? You could be so many things, instead!”

And I wasn’t sure. I still wasn’t sure.

“And how can everybody else — be so sure?!” I wondered.

After the first semester in my MFA program, the uncertainty about my profession would remain. However, the overall vision of my life was becoming clearer: I would be an artist. I WAS an artist. And it was starting to be enough — to be that one thing.

And so, there I was: Willing to risk my life’s stability — the stability about which my contemporaries seemed to be so sure — for the sake of seeking daily inspiration. I would take on projects that would fuel my gratitude and curiosity. I would begin spending my nights in companies of others who shared my exotic disease — the dis-ease of the soul; and I would attend their shows and poetry readings, and loom in front of their paintings in tiny New York galleries. And none of us were still certain about our destinations; and yes, we were still filled with angst. But we did share the same vision: Our moments of happiness were simultaneous to the moments of creation — the moments of dis-ease.

Throughout the years, some of my contemporaries have disappeared into their professions: They turned out to be successful administrators and great teachers. Wonderful teachers, as a matter of fact! I would watch them moving with seeming certainty through their honorable daily routines.

“Still: How can you be so sure?” I would interview a few of them, years later.

I had succumbed to my disease fully by then, and I would learn to maneuver the demands of my survival jobs. I had surrendered.

“Are you kidding?! We aren’t sure at all!” some would answer, honestly.

And for the first time, in their tired and good, decent and honorable faces, I would notice a slight glimmer of doubt.

“Oh!” I would wonder. “So, no one really knows, for sure!”

Strangely, I would find no comfort in their doubtfulness.

But I would find great ease in knowing that I myself had fully surrendered to my disease: The dis-ease of my soul — of an artist.

There is a passion, in all of us. It boils. It protests: In Rome*, Yemen, Africa**. It pushes to break us out of our skins — out of our boundaries; shackles, limits, laws; cowardice — and to rebel.

Some have chosen to live quietly, getting by. They seem to cause the least conflict. And if on occasion they hurt one another — it will be most likely by accident. A tiny demand will rise in their souls — a tiny rebellion against obedience that has seemingly earned them nothing.

“So, what’s the fucking point?!” I ask.

And they reach for something that the rest of the world won’t miss much. They reach with passion. There may be an accidental victim: He’s gotten in the way of their reaching.

But what’s a little hurt — against a lifetime of groveling?

Nothing.

Others manages to tangle up their egos in the chalk lines of the score board that keeps track of the rat race. They are a special clan: They measure life in numbers. In things. In values. Passionately. To them, there always seems to be a deadline in life, called Work Until:

Work Until: They get tired of playing. Work Until: They gain a debt, then pay it off. Work Until: They have a piece of land, for a house or a deathbed. Until they pay off a palace, a chariot, a marriage, a child’s tuition: A Happily Ever After.

Work Until: They never need to work again. Work Until: They can rest. Work Until…

Nothing.

Their days turn into discardable minutes: Five minutes — Until. Thirty years — Until. Another person’s life — Until. Until, Until, Until, Until. They pump themselves up against the lackluster crawl of the minutes. They lose themselves — in things, in numbers. In scores. With passion.

Some actually manage to get there: God bless ‘em! They get to their anticipated Until, for the sake of which, they’ve sacrificed so many minutes. And some have even sacrificed their truths. Their passions.

That’s when the real horror happens: At the end, they soon discover that nothing, in life, lacks a price.

Nothing.

And they find that the price of Until usually turns out to be gastronomical: Greed. Sacrifice. Health. Denial. Nothing.

And that shit isn’t refundable!

“So, what’s the fucking point?!” I ask.

And:

What happens to LOVE — I ask — in such a lifetime of Until?

Find me a man who knows the answer to that. For I have asked too many men who’ve given me mere accusations in return. Something about time, or timing. Readiness and plans. Something about their Until. I couldn’t really stick around for their explanations for long: Their fear was eating up their faces — and my time. So, find me a man who knows the answer to: What’s the fucking point?! I find me one who answers with passion.

Oh, and don’t discount those poor suckers born with extremely sensitive souls.

But what happens when they don’t? Well, then: Please, say a prayer for those poor suckers: A Hail Mary for the Sensitives. For they are stuck here, among us, with no delusion to save them from the ache. And no Until.

“Oh, but everyone aches!” the others object.

Still, the sensitives get the worse of it, in this life. They stumble around, among us, like unwanted orphans. Like innocents.

“But do YOU ache?” they ask.

Poor suckers! They insist on hitting the truth on the nail. It’s so annoying!

“Everyone aches,” the others object.

The sensitives study our faces for signs that they aren’t the only ones feeling this much. It’s innocence, at its worst. It’s passion.

“Then, what do you do — to cope?” they ask.

“Nothing.”

So, they devote their lifetimes to taking notes. They write down our words, then regurgitate them, in a prettier form: Poetry. Others jot down their sketches, finding beauty in our fear-eaten faces. And innocence, or whatever is left of it. Passion. Some put on reenactments:

“Wouldn’t this make for a better picture, in life?” they ask.

The others scoff, look away.

They do not have the time for truth — Until…

They do not have time — for a revolution.

No: They would rather spend their lives suspended until the arrival of Until. Or, they spend their lifetimes — groveling.

Surely, there will be small griefs that happen until the Until, and they’ll complain and demand attention. They’ll demand a change, but only enough of it — and only if it’s convenient — and never for the sake of others.

Because everyone aches. And there is nothing to be done about that.

Nothing.

But what would happen if we gathered our passions into a fist and planted a punch?

For nearly six miles I was chanting this to the steering wheel of my car, yesternight. I was caressing it, leaning my flushed cheek bones against its drying leather. And when no one was looking, I even planted a peck onto it, with my semi-dehydrated lips:

“We can make it!”

I suspected this would happen: I had waited till the very last moment — again! — to refill my gas tank. And now, I was running late to a rehearsal — again! — with my gas light on: AGAIN!

“God damn it!” I would have sworn normally as I sensed the neon yellow light on my dashboard, out of the corner of my eye. “I should’ve done this last night!”

But that night, I was exhausted, thinking only of the sleepiness, somewhere in my calves and feet; and of trying to not run outta gas — again.

And now, I was sitting in traffic on a congested side street someone had recommended to me as a shortcut against, um, well… traffic. But that’s what happens quite a bit: Other people’s shortcuts — turn into my hell.

So, I would much rather just keep taking my own routes; doing it my own way.

But then, yesternight, I was running late — again.

So, I attempted to surrender: “We can make it!”

I had already done THE work, by then: Five hours — GONE out of my day! Grateful! Of course, I was grateful — for being able to do it. But fitting in THE work every day always required two things: lack of sleep and brutal discipline toward the rest of my life.

And then, of course, there was the survival hustle: Chalk up another three hours to that! But I have long surrendered to that already, because I am the one who chose this destiny, this route. I am the one who rejected a myriad of day jobs and hustled to get herself out of the drudgery of the restaurant business, as well. I am the one who agreed to the chronic pain-in-the-ass-ness of a freelancer’s life. I am the one continuously taking — and building — my own ways. Because only then, do I have enough dignity and space — for THE work.

And now, I was dashing across town: To do more work.

Okay, maybe I wasn’t dashing: I was crawling, dragging my ass through the overheated, exhausted streets of LA-LA. I was serving my time among others with their stories of pursuits, and with exhaustion written all over their drooping faces. And while doing so, I was resisting every urge to curse out the retirees existing in their own timezones inside their oversized Lexuses:

“Why aren’t you moving?!” I’d usually flail while studying the trail of break lights ahead of me. Normally, there is no rhyme or reason for it: only the collision of other people’s timezones. And I have to remember that they too have done their work that day: THE work.

So, I attempt to surrender: “We can make it!”

The side street finally opened into a giant boulevard. We flooded onto it, and the people coexisting in my timezone took over the outer lanes — and we got going.

But then: My gas light came on.

God damn it!

I immediately remembered the poor sucker in a Porsche who got stuck in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard, the night before. I had been sitting in traffic, on a congested side street, waiting to merge. Because that’s what happens quite a bit: My shortcuts collide with the shortcuts of others; and we have no choice but to obey each other’s timezones.

“But why aren’t we moving?!” I kept thinking and trying to see ahead of the red trail of break lights. Surely, there was no rhyme or reason for it!

Not until we flooded into the intersection, did I notice the Porsche owner sweating, swearing, cursing out the honking drivers, as he refilled his tank with a portable plastic canister. A Porsche outta gas: Times must be tough, I thought.

And we kept on crawling, yesternight. We kept on — serving time.

Some of us had already done THE work. Others just hustled to survive.

So, I attempted to surrender: “We can make it, surely! We can make it! All of us!”

And I would make it, not just to a gas station, but to my favorite one. I would pull up behind a tired, droopy face of a young man who stared into space above the rooftop of his vintage Volvo. He would forget to close the flap on the side of his car, and I would honk. He waved, pulled out masterfully and waved again. Thank goodness, there were people coexisting in my timezone.

“We can make it, babe!” I kept chanting.

Forty on six.

Have a good night.

You too, babe.

The nearness of humanity outside the plastic bodies of our cars was beginning to soothe me. The whiff of gas followed the short-stop pumping sound of the pipes. I began staring ahead, above the rooftop of my car.

“Um…” I heard.

An older man with smirking eyes and crooked yellow teeth was standing next to me, while clutching a ten dollar bill.